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Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Never doubt that surprising and wonderful events can happen. In this case, three little girls living in a coal bin in the slums of Kampala, Uganda were connected by our One School at a Time Program Manager to another Ugandan organization called Watoto Ministries.

This organization gave them a new life, a new home, safety, regular meals, medical care, and a guaranteed education. The youngest of the sisters, Olivia, turned out to have musical talents. She recently traveled as part of the Watoto Children’s choir to the UK for music and dance performances.

How many other children are out there with hidden talents and marvelous capabilities who will never receive the opportunity to manifest their true potential?

Friday, October 24, 2014

One School's Ugandan Program Manager, Hussein Tadesse, meets with teachers at the Kassanda Boarding Primary School this summer.

(Click images to view larger)

Blog post by One School Board member, Ken Driese, who visited Uganda last summer (2014) to work with Ugandan Program Manager, Hussein Tadesse.

Most of us wake up, turn on our coffee maker or electric tea
kettle, take a hot shower, and jump into our cars for the commute to work, perhaps
spending a little time online to read our e-mail or survey the day’s news and
weather while we sip our coffee. It’s
easy to take these conveniences for granted when you live in Boulder, Colorado,
where One School is based, or in just about any town in the United States. But working in Kampala, Uganda or rural
Kassanda, where One School at a Time partner schools are located, is a different
experience entirely. I spent a humbling
two weeks living with One School’s Ugandan Program Manager, Hussein Tadesse,
and his family this summer in Kampala, working with Hussein as he balanced
day-to-day life in a sprawling East African city with his passion for One School’s
mission—improving educational opportunities for the students at our partner
schools.

What are some of the challenges of working in Uganda? The morning routine is a good place to start. Life at home for Hussein is a
partnership. His wife, Afwa, and
her helper, Monika, play a huge and largely unrecognized role in One School’s
success by managing much of Hussein’s home life so that he can devote more of
his impressive energy to our projects.
Before sunrise, they are out of bed to start a small charcoal cook-fire
in the cooking alcove behind the house.
Breakfast is not taken lightly—at least not with a visitor in the
house—and eggs, chapatis, potatoes, and fresh fruit are prepared as one by one
Hussein, his four children, and one house guest (me!) emerge sleepily from our
rooms. Milk is heated for coffee, and
water is boiled; laundry is piled in a plastic tub to be washed by hand later
in the day. Kids dress and get ready to walk
to school. Hussein lays out the day’s
work plan.

Hussein and his wonderful family in Kampala.

The schedule during each day of my visit was dominated by
one or two meetings along with a "short" list of errands—visiting the bank to
deal with One School financial matters or negotiating chaotic markets to
purchase supplies. Normally, these
activities require Hussein to walk from his house out to the main road in
Ntinda, the chaotic “suburb” of Kampala where
he lives, to find a boda-boda (motorcycle taxi) or matutu (minivan
taxi). Although ubiquitous in the city,
these taxis are notoriously dangerous.
Boda-bodas weave recklessly in crazy traffic, squeezing
through tiny gaps between massive cargo-laden trucks and cars jockeying for
position in major unregulated intersections.
Matutu drivers are paid by the trip, so speed limits and “sane” passing
strategies are often ignored. And while the
roads in Kampala have improved a little since I was there in 2009, they are
still pothole-riddled obstacle courses that, along with the traffic, made
progress slow even with the hired car and driver that I enjoyed during my visit. In the rainy season this scenario is awash in tropical
downpours.

Another huge challenge to productivity in Uganda is internet
access, something that most of us assume that we’ll have just about anywhere we
go. There is no widespread network of
fast internet in Kampala, despite enthusiastic billboards suggesting the
contrary, and most professionals who do have computers access the web using
plug-in USB modems that connect excruciatingly slowly to the cell phone
network. In Hussein’s office at his
house, just connecting to an e-mail provider could take 15 minutes or more
before you even began to try to peck out a message. And posting images onto One School’s Facebook
stream, an activity I had naively intended to do regularly while in-country,
was nearly impossible.

To sidestep this, our first mission of the day was often a
trip to Garden City, a shopping mall about twenty minutes from Hussein’s house,
where we could sit in a small restaurant with intermittent wireless service
that was faster than Hussein’s cell connection.
We’d order coffee and desperately work to conduct online business as the
wireless signal came and went. In rural
Kassanda, where the partner schools are located, there is no usable internet,
and all business is transacted in person or on the phone.

Hussein preparing for a meeting at Garden City in Kampala, a shopping mall with intermittent faster (but still slow) internet than at his house.

Malaria poses another formidable challenge. During the two weeks
that I was in Uganda, diligently swallowing my anti-malarial tablets every
morning, Hussein worked while dealing with bouts of malaria suffered by two of
his children, his wife’s helper, Monika, and Pius, the man who takes care of
One School’s field office in Kassanda.
When we arrived at Kassanda, Pius jumped into action despite feeling
horrible, and the next day Hussein spent considerable time and some of his own
money taking Pius first to an impossibly overcrowded public clinic and then to
a more expensive private clinic to get treatment. Back home in Kampala, his kids had to be shuttled to the
local hospital—in Uganda people go directly to the hospital rather than to
doctor’s offices.

These are just a few of the challenges to working
productively in Uganda. Complex
bureaucracies, petty crime, corruption, and even shopping are time consuming
activities. And yet Hussein maintains an
impressive focus and dedication to mission.
He is One School’s primary strength and the key to our success.

One night in Kassanda, as I sat around the dinner table with
Hussein, Pius, and our driver, also named Hussein, thinking about how much I
didn’t like having to pee in a bucket at night because it was too risky to go
to the outhouse in the dark, Hussein, with typical eloquence, described a
vision for education in rural Kassanda.
“We need to give these children skills to help them thrive in Kassanda,” he told me. “Mathematics and reading alone aren’t enough if they
aren’t tied to the lives these kids live.”

While I worried about the outhouse, Hussein had been thinking hard about learning activities
that tied basic academic skills to the economics of raising chickens.

It’s easy to visit a developing country like Uganda for a
couple of weeks and muddle through the inconveniences that are part of life there.
It’s something else entirely to live these “inconveniences” every single
day, while at the same time pushing relentlessly forward with an intensely
focused vision for improving the lives of students. This is the life Hussein lives and the vision
that he brings to our projects. We’re
lucky to have him.

“Girl’s education is the highest-returning social investment in the
world.” (Gene Sperling, Director of the Center for Universal Education at
the Council on Foreign Relations). Girl’s education not only changes individual
lives, but also has the power to change entire communities—and countries.
According to USAID:

•A 10% increase in girls in school
raises a country’s GDP an average of 3%

•Girls who stay in school for 7 or more
years marry 4 years later and have 2 fewer children

Journalist Nikolas Kristof writes, "Yet we’ve also learned that done right,
education changes almost everything. Evidence suggests that educating girls
increases productivity, raises health standards, reduces birthrates and undermines
extremism. Drones and missiles can fight terrorism, but an even more
transformative weapon is a girl with a book, and it’s one that is remarkably
cost-effective. For the price of a single Tomahawk cruise missile, it’s
possible to build about 20 schools".

What are simple, cost effective
interventions that can help Ugandan girls stay in school?

•Provide
new uniforms for their developing bodies.

Girls often drop out of school because they
lack a school uniform. Historically, students who do not wear uniforms can be
sent home at the discretion of the principal. Girls may solve this problem by
finding a "sugar daddy," an older man with money who will pay for her
school uniform as long as she has sex with him. Girls who do this may
suffer greatly since older men are more likely to be infected with HIV than
younger ones.

•Provide
a way for girls to manage their menstruation.

Imagine telling your
menstruating daughter that she must stay home from school because you can not
afford to provide her with sanitary pads? This is the sad reality for many
Ugandan girls, especially those whose families are living in rural areas on
less than $1/day. These girls cannot afford to buy sanitary products and
instead resort to using old rags, toilet paper, newspaper, ash, mud and even
cow dung. They skip school to avoid embarrassing leaks and stains in public.
Some girls just drop out of school completely.

Teacher demonstrates how girls use banana fiber to make a sanitary pad.

•Provide
peer to peer mentoring, educational and emotional support meetings for girls
and their parents.

The onset
of menstruation puts African girls at educational risk. Negative practices
include sexual harassment (even from teachers), withdrawal of economic support
from the home and the sudden pressure to marry. Efforts to keep girls in school
should include
regular support and informational meetings for both older girls and their parents.

•Provide
private girl’s latrines and wash areas at school.

Rural schools in Uganda
sometime do not have adequate toilet facilities, especially for girls.

•Provide
clean on site water.

In Africa, girls are
expected to collect water. Girls can be subject to assault
while collecting water, and they also lose valuable classroom time. A complete clean water system helps girls
while benefitting all the students and community- overall health and sanitation
improves.

•Informational meetings with the girls
enrolled in the uniform program, their teachers and their parents were held
each school term since the uniforms and pads were distributed in 2013. The purpose of these meetings is to provide these girls with information about
their changing bodies and to encourage parents to support their daughters to
stay in school.

•Construction of girls latrine and wash
area at Partner School #2 (2012).

Support One School at a Time to help more Ugandan girls beat
the odds! Your tax deductible donation will pay for re-useable sanitary pad
kits for 500 older girls at our 5 partner schools in 2015, and clean water
systems at Partner Schools #4 and #5. Donate
Now!

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Hussein, his wife Afwa, and his five children (youngest to
oldest:Oman, Marshall, Shamsa,
Shiaoban, Firdaus)

Blog post by One
School board member, Ken Driese, who is in Uganda working with the program
staff there (Hussein and Diana).

I leave Kampala early Sunday morning for a two-week holiday
in Namibia before returning to the U.S.It’s
been a whirlwind.After a week working
from the field office in Kassanda (a couple of hours from Kampala—see previous
post), we returned to Hussein’s house and have been busy with a series of
meetings and activities about One School programs, planning, and
philosophy.I’ve learned a lot from Hussein,
Diana, and the very strong Ugandan Board.

OneSchool employee,
Diana, working in the office at Hussein’s house.

I’m staying with Hussein, in a house that serves as his
family home, the One School Kampala office, and guest quarters for those of us
that visit from the U.S..Hussein and
his family are remarkable hosts, and I feel guilty about being waited on hand
and foot with little recourse!Even my
laundry is cleaned almost daily, which is helpful, since I didn’t bring many
clothes.

Photo taken at the local market, while shopping with
Hussein.

Hussein has five children.I will undoubtedly butcher the spelling of their names here, so forgive
me, Hussein, as you read this!The
eldest (Firdaus) is in boarding school for the term, and won’t return home
until late August (summer doesn’t have the same meaning here on the equator as
it does in the U.S.).The next two
(Shamsha and Shiaoban) are gone most of the day at school—they leave the house
not long after 7 a.m. and don’t return until close to 5.The other two, Marshall Rosenberg (3) (named
after the man who developed the Non-Violent Communication philosophy that
Hussein is studying), and Oman (1) (means “peace”) are home, though Marshall
would normally be at school during the week—he’s recovering this week from a
burn on his wrist.Hussein’s wife, Afwa,
and their live-in helper, Monika, have their hands full with cooking and caring
for the kids, not to mention dealing with a house guest.In many ways, their quiet support on the home
front allows Hussein to do all that he does for One School.

Shopping for Firdaus before dropping her at boarding school
for the term.

Mornings and evenings are spent with the family or working
in my room.Shiaoban loves to play a
version of Chutes and Ladders with me (called snakes and ladders!), and
Marshall loves to follow me around and ask questions or push buttons on my
watch, as 3-year-olds are wont to do.He’s very precocious, and I joke with Hussein that someday he will be
president.

In the mornings I drink my coffee under the avocado tree in
the backyard while Afwa makes chapati on the charcoal burner and Monika sweeps
the yard.Interesting birds come and go, and sometimes a
few chickens cluck around the yard, puckish.Hussein and Afwa hope to augment the number of chickens drastically (to
300, and it’s not a big yard!) and sell eggs for profit, but that is a future
plan.

Yesterday, while I peacefully sipped my Peet’s, there was an
enormous whoosh as a giant branch from the neighbor’s papaya tree spontaneously
broke lose and crashed into their yard, sending the resident dog pack into a
tizzy; it’s a different environment here on the equator.

I’ll have a lot to digest and report after I
return home and have more time to write and think, and access to the internet
here is inconvenient, so I’ll leave those meatier posts for later in the
summer.